What are some games that were kind of "Sleeper hits" for you, or games you initially didn't like but warmed up to?

For me, Warframe was one of them. I'm generally not a fan of games that do a poor job of explaining themselves - it often makes me feel overwhelmed, like if you listened to a Senior-level class and they toss all sorts of jargon and stuff at you or you try to do their assignments and think "...What do you even want me to DO?!" And let's just say... Warframe does a HORRIBLE job of explaining itself. It's gotten better, but even then, if you picked up the game it's very VERY easy to get lost or overwhelmed with mechanics the tutorial doesn't explain. And I especially get annoyed at RNG.

Yet the game has had me logging on for daily rewards and I flat out WANT to get the frames and even the primes.

I had never played Harvest Moon or anything like it, so I was really shocked with how much I absolutely ate up Stardew Valley. I poured a LOT of time into that game (Thanks Ian), and I might be purchasing it for the Switch when I have the opportunity.

^Had a similar experience with Rune Factory 4, which I played after hating several of the Harvest Moon games.

Overwatch: Only played it all because of the free beta week. Now it's only behind the last three Elder Scrolls games and osu! in terms of playtime.

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun: Played the demo for 10 minutes and didn't get it. Bought it because of all the praise expecting to refund, and ended up getting far and away my favorite stealth game.

...I bought 'Defiance' on a lark because it was on the cheap. It just looked like some generic sci-fi shooter----------if they'd advertised it as the MMO version of 'Borderlands' it turned out to be, I'd have snapped it up far earlier on.

Earthbound. I hate turn-based combat and I thought that would be enough to turn me off of it; plus the first time I tried playing it I got a couple hours in and then kind of got distracted by other stuff. I figured I'd never actually get around to finishing it and that it was probably a solid game but not anything I could get super into.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA I was wrong

(Also calling Earthbound's battle system purely turn based is a huge disservice to it)

I got really into Terraria for a little while. I usually hate open-ended crafting based games (namely, Minecraft), so this took me by surprise. Less surprising is the fact that I lost interest after about a week and haven't played it since.

I had never played Harvest Moon or anything like it, so I was really shocked with how much I absolutely ate up Stardew Valley. I poured a LOT of time into that game (Thanks Ian), and I might be purchasing it for the Switch when I have the opportunity.

Oh my god I **** love Stardew Valley. I'm so hopelessly addicted to it right now.

I had never played Harvest Moon or anything like it, so I was really shocked with how much I absolutely ate up Stardew Valley. I poured a LOT of time into that game (Thanks Ian), and I might be purchasing it for the Switch when I have the opportunity.

Oh my god I **** love Stardew Valley. I'm so hopelessly addicted to it right now.

I've seen you hop on that Stardew Valley probably as often as you've seen me hop on that Mario Odyssey

I bought Terraria because I saw it on YouTube and it looked good when the developer or whoever it was played it. Then I tried playing it, and it was not at all interesting or like what I saw.

I remember really enjoying the SNES Harvest Moon. I still like the farming genre, but most of that is heavy on the clicking. I'm not sure I have played another Harvest Moon since, though. I do have one on Gamecube (two, but GameStop sells dud games) and one on PSN. Stardew Valley is the first game similar to what I remember of that. I was really into that for about 60 hours and then lost interest, but that's a nice amount of play time.

Now I know there's a reason you shouldn't blame others when you do something wrong, and that reason is: you might get caught and have to apologize to a bunch of dumb peasants.

^Do you really hate turn-based combat, though? Because you love Pokemon and the Mother series...

Edit: and Persona...and Paper Mario...

I like turn-based combat with realtime elements, and before getting into Earthbound I had no idea how much that would factor in. MOTHER and Paper Mario are prime examples of what I do most definitely like

and if I'm being honest Pokemon battles are legit my least favorite thing about pokemon. I just spam strong attacks with over leveled pokemon to win; I like exploring and catching and raising pokemon and taking down bad guys/rivals narratively way more than I derive enjoyment from its battle system.

For the sake of posting something here, I will admit that this was the case with The Plutonia Experiment. Mostly because until that point I was sort of disappointed in Doom 2's level designs and TNT Evilution was even worse that that. Plutonia Experiment, meanwhile, has great levels and while they are extremely challenging, it's not impossible to overcome if you're careful. It helped me see how good the changes were to Doom 2 and I ended up loving the games all the more for this.

I thought of another example for this thread: Seiken Densetsu 3. I've played Secret of Mana, and while I know it's a beloved game and will admit it has beautiful graphics and music and interesting game mechanics, I found the execution less-than-satisfying and didn't enjoy it as much as Square's other SNES RPGs. (Ditto Secret of Evermore.) I expected about the same from SD3, but it turned out to be a much more refined game, and was way more fun for me to play.